When Tim Scott was chosen by our illustrious governor, Nikki Haley, to become our newest Senator, replacing Jim DeMint who retired to head the Heritage Foundation, he left the 1st District of South Carolina without a congressman. The 1st District is on the coast of South Carolina, and includes Charleston, the hometown of Stephen Colbert and his sister, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch. It’s also the District from which our bright and shining homestate hero, Mark Sanford, comes.

Elizabeth Colbert-Busch has announced that she is going to file Tuesday to run as a Democrat for the special election for Tim Scott’s old seat.

Her father and two of her brothers were killed in a plane crash when she was 19. She was married to a man who ended up on “America’s Most Wanted.” And in 2001, while at a business conference in New York City, she was sitting in a building directly across the street from the World Trade Center when two jetliners slammed into its twin towers, forever changing the landscape of America.

But looking into her sparkling brown eyes, you’d never know this woman has seen enough tragedy for two lifetimes. Her infectious laugh fills the room as she talks about her children. Her face lights up every time she mentions Claus, her second husband and the man she calls the love of her life. And when she talks about her job, she speaks with a passion so great, you’d swear her boss was sitting next to her.

As director of business development for Clemson University’s Restoration Institute, Colbert-Busch is, for lack of a better term, the school’s corporate matchmaker. She finds companies that could benefit from the kind of advanced environmentally conscious research the university is doing — wind turbine testing, water studies, different kinds of renewable energy — and partners with them. More to the point, she asks them for money. In return, the corporations get the kind of cutting-edge information to help them stay one step ahead of the competition.

When Tim Scott initially ran for the district, he was an impressive fundraiser — outspending his opponents 35:1. The results? In 2010 he won the district 65%-29% against a Democratic challenger — becoming the first African-American Republican elected to Congress from SC in 114 years. This was a huge improvement (for Republicans) over the 2008 results, which was a fluke 52%-48% thanks to Barack Obama’s presence on the ballot. Tim Scott won the race in 2012 62%-36%, outspending his opponent 20:1.

So, can a Colbert bump make the difference in the 1st District of South Carolina?